Environmental sustainability

Recycling station in a warehouse

Saving resources for a sustainable future

One of our priority areas is to reduce the climate impact linked to energy consumption in our offices, warehouses, factories and subsidiaries. As such, we are working to phase out fossil energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas. Our energy sources are mapped and we are taking measures to switch to fossil-free energy throughout the organisation. As part of this work, we are installing solar panels at our central warehouse in Halmstad, Sweden and our factory in Poland.

Another important factor is to reduce the total amount of waste produced by the business. To achieve this, we are focusing on the improvement measures that will have the greatest impact. The pallet project is one of our internal projects, a collaboration between the head office in Halmstad and the factory in Poland. The purpose of the project is to reduce the amount of waste sent for incineration and increase the quality of our pallets, so that they can be used for longer and stay in circulation.

Person quality checking the height of a chair

Better durability of products and materials

The goal is for our products to meet and maintain high quality levels in terms of function and safety, have a long lifespan and harm neither people nor our environment. In ongoing customer evaluations, we see that product quality is an area that always receives high scores, which shows that our hard work pays off. In 2021 we also extended our warranty period from three to seven years in order to demonstrate our continued commitment to developing and offering quality products that last over time.

There are constantly new legal obligations and customer requirements for substances that cannot be used in manufacturing, which means that we need to work proactively and smartly to keep documentation and information about products and materials up to date. In the coming years, we will launch a new internal system to ensure we hold such information and to allow us to be proactive and work preventively.

The expectation is that we should also be able to measure and calculate the environmental and climate impact of our products within the system. The requirements for reporting a product's greenhouse gas emissions throughout its life cycle are increasing and we are striving to increase our competence and knowledge in this area.

Railway line running through the countryside

Sustainable thinking in our transport

One of the biggest environmental improvement challenges worldwide is to reduce transport emissions. For us at AJ Products, transport is a prioritised environmental factor. The primary transport types that we use are road, rail and sea.
 
In order to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we are taking the following initiatives:

  • switching from road to rail transport;
  • focusing on reducing transport damage in order to reduce the number of unnecessary journeys;
  • improving our fill rate on both incoming and outgoing shipments so that fewer shipments are required.

We are continuously working to improve our record of emissions data from all of our freight forwarders with the aim of reporting all emissions linked to purchased transport.

Front cover of sustainability report brochure

Read our complete sustainability report for 2022